Technology and Junk

But I’m Ben! Honestly, I love the Less is More idea.   But you still have to build depth into your products if you want people to remain passionate over the long haul.  Another frustration and waste of time with basecamp today.

Been spending what little blogging time I have focusing just on legal technology.  Definitely check us out when you get the chance.  Here’s a link to my most recent post highlighting some of the accomplishments we had at Nextpoint in 2009 and promising even greater strides in 2010.  Ahhh yes 2010, the year I predict I’ll buy my first windows pc… okay first since I swore them off 4 years ago.  Media center (or whatever it’s called in windows 7) is calling me and while mac mini isn’t completely out of the running can I really justify the difference in cost for hardware and software?  All I want is some hulu on my tv and dvr without monthly fees.

Anyway, also been tweeting a good amount with @benjaminwolf and @nextpointlab.

Happy new year!

Are you currently NOT making millions of dollars in real estate? Then, you’ve got to hear this. You can become an instant millionaire working from home for only 20 hours per week. I did it and want to share my 10 easy steps with you!  It’s just four easy payments of $99.95 to get my 100% guaranteed, work from home, real estate millionaire maker DVD series.

Okay, we’ve all heard that too many times.  And if you are a good engineer with a logical engineering mind like mine, you see right through this BS.  You think… if this guy is so good at real estate, then why is he selling DVD’s?  Who falls for this nonsense?

But strangely, when it comes to development processes so many people want to take the bait.  They buy into the promises of agile this or whatever methodology is the news of the day.  I’m not saying it’s ALL a scam or a waste of time… just the vast majority of it (say 99%).  Again, if this guy is such a great engineer or entrepreneur… why the heck is he here, speaking to us, selling an O’Reilly book on Developing X using the Y process?

No software process is going to make you build better software.  I’m not saying you can’t find good practical ideas by reading that stuff, but I think you’d be better off just thinking.  No more processes… just good engineers that are allowed and encouraged to think.  That’s my Ben Wolf 100% no fail software guarantee.  Good engineers that think will help you make better software.  It won’t cost you a nickel more.

There is an insane amount of talk going on in the internet technology world today.  By far the most acclaimed technologists are those that are acclaimed writers or video bloggers.  For the rest of us, I suppose twitter is a bit helpful to mount meager attempts at getting in the fame game.  Everybody is pushing something.  A product, a platform, or (my least favorite) a process.  Scram, scrum, agile, blech.  Whatever happened to people doing things the way that make sense in their unique situation?  Making good decisions… Thinking?  Do we need to have the world validate our processes?  Oh we should be agile?  And the best way to do that is by reading books and going to conferences?  I don’t think so A-hole.

Here’s the bottom line for me… I may or may not listen to your talk.  I may find it interesting, inspiring, or helpful.  And I may not.  But at the end of the day, I’m going to judge you on your products.  Not to sound negative, cuz for a lot of shops this is an ideal outcome.  But for a lot of other shops… it’s going to be very exposing.  You have your Gary V’s who talk A LOT and it’s a part of the product.  Then you have 37signals, who talk a lot and it’s part of their product.  But for me, 37signals better start building up the inventory to match it.  Less is less guys.  Project management software and hammers are not similar.

So I guess I’d better keep this short.  The world clearly has a serious need for more/better technology so I’m going to build it.  Can we make our products actually speak for themselves?  I’m thinking of some big time success stories (Zappos, Google)  that have done just that.

Checkout this Planning Falacy post by 37 Signals.  It’s an interesting take and for the most part something with which I very much agree.  To completely forego planning seems a bit extreme in my opinion.  I prefer to make plans and not tell anybody about them… I mean maybe the inner circle.  For example, if you publish a schedule/plan for an upcoming software release there are really only two outcomes and both are negative.

1.  You could finish late.  This one is pretty obvious, it’s what everybody is afraid of.  The big dig.

2.  You could finish early.  This is rare, because basically the team will just slow down.  It wastes time.  And if pushed to provide a date, any smart person will be as conservative as possible.  I think that project would take 2 months, but if we’re going to print t-shirts with the date on them I suppose I better say 6 months to be safe.  You pretty much just guaranteed the project would take 3 times as long.

So my plan, is to say 2 months but not really tell anybody.  Then when the thing is done in two months you can print the t-shirts and start working on whatever is next.

This has been sitting in draft mode forever… just discovered it and decided to let it rip.

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This post by “Uncle Bob” (and inspired by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky) got my colleague Jim and I talking about quality and testing in software again.  It’s a debate I feel like I’ve been having for my entire career in software development.  I’ve often found myself taking extreme stances like “testing is a waste of time” or “quality doesn’t really matter” to get a point across.  But of course, we all know that testing is important and that quality does matter.  Behind the work that most of us do, there are very real business constraints.  We don’t have infinite resources and neither do our customers.  So the key take away is that there absolutely is a point where quality no longer matters.  A point where quality improvements will not add to the value the software is creating.

I’ve done a lot of hiring over the years and have usually passed on folks that want to talk about code coverage in testing.  Not because I don’t think they are good engineers, but because I know we don’t share a common philosophy.  I’ve found that quality enhancements, like features, need limits.  I like engineers who feel strongly about testing and code coverage on the highest value and highest risk components of the application.  But for the other stuff, will do the best they can without having to double the code base with tests.  At my current shop, nextpointlab.com, we have golden rules that govern everything we design and build.  Places where mistakes matter and would really hurt us and our customers.  Not every feature is as important as the next… in most applications there are probably two or three things where quality is absolutely critical.

“The Blue Heart of the Planet”

Just passing along a great presentation. I’ve been eating strictly vegetarian at Sushi restaurants for a very long time. Not for ecological reasons, although I’ll now be adding that to my list. There are some absolutely wonderful vegetarian options at sushi restaurants.  Oshinko,  pickled gourd, sweet tofu.  I really can’t get enough of those things.